Analysing the social difference

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Myself and my two daughters, who are all on the spectrum went out to eat.

Alongside us was a table full of school-age boys. The boys were chatting away constantly and noisily, and because they were next to us and very loud I couldn't help hear their conversations. This put me into analytical mode at how differently they behaved from us.

I focused on what myself and my daughters were doing. We all sat quietly eating without talking, except to make a comment that was always factually based (such as "these fries are too hot") every so often.

It really brought home an example of how different we are as Aspies. We all had reserved body language, sitting pretty stiffly while we ate, whilst the boys moved a lot while they spoke animatedly. We probably looked almost like robots compared to them.

It also surprised me at their topics of conversation, I know girls are supposedly gossipy but these boys were too. They were talking about their parents divorcing, how they felt about it, asking if their mum/dad had a boyfriend/girlfriend, talking about people in the media etc.

I've never really consciously analysed the differences in that way before, but once I looked I could really see it.

No-one want to add to this thread?

It is normal to feel like Spock around normal people.

they might be extroverted autistic people

I think generally when people are together in a restaurant or something with peers, they tend to talk about something. If they don't have a particular topic, then they tend to go toward gossiping.

I went to an all-you-can-eat cake restaurant (~$20 for more than 30 different cakes etc). Usually that place is full of girls. On that occasion, this big group of high school or uni boys only (about 10 boys) came in. They were just eating a lot of cakes very fast without talking and in half an hour they all looked somehow exhausted and were just sitting there, still not talking much. They didn't look nerdy or anything. Just regular boys. They were a very strange crowd, but far better than noisy girls. Were they a big group of autistic boys? Very unlikely.

Umm, no.

I cannot imagine a whole group of 5 or 6 autistic boys happening to be out together in that way and being so interested in how each other felt at their parents divorcing and talking about celebrities. I think extrovert Aspies/Auties are probably a minority. And I think the tendency with people with ASCs is to use conversation as an information exchange, not to be gossipy. They were very NT.

Love it. They must have felt as sick as pigs.

Perhaps they were having a competition to see who could eat the most without throwing up, or perhaps they were living in digs and their budget was slim so they were feeding up for the week!

I marvel when I hear a conversation that doesn't revolve around D&D, anime, or Yu-gi-oh.

NTs in general are gossipy, in my experience.

It's an adaptive strategy - if you live in a complex, shifting social environment, it's beneficial to keep track of what's going on within that environment.



Nope. Here's what extroverted autistics tend to be like:

Person A: [long infodump about subject A]

Person B: [grabs something tangential to turn topic to subject B, then gives long infodump about that]

Person C: [long infodump about how subject B relates to subject C]

Person A: [brings back subject A and infodumps some more]

With subjects being intense interest type things, usually non-social, or if they are social they're probably more about intellectual analysis of social concepts than about individual people.